HEALTH CARE and SOCIAL SECURITY
Mr. and Mrs. Average American voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election. They were hoping to get a tax refund. What if Mr. Trump wins?
HEALTH CARE
A few months after the election Mr. Average American noticed a small growth on the outside of his left calf. He went to his local family doctor who sent him to a dermatologist. The family doctor charged $250.00 for the visit. Mr. A’s medical insurance paid all but $50.00 dollars. On February 2nd the dermatologist, Dr. Hershel, cut out the growth. It was a deep wound. The doctor billed $405.00, and the insurance company allowed $300.00 and paid $250.00 leaving a balance of $50.00 which Mr. A paid. The lab studies of February 15th were billed at $650.00 and $250.00 was allowed and paid in full by insurance. They showed that the tissue was cancerous.
On April 2nd Mr. A received a notice of cancelation from his health insurance provider. When Mr. A tried to get new insurance he was rejected because he had leg cancer, a pre-existing condition. The Trump administration had rolled back the law in order to protect the insurance companies from exposure resulting from pre-existing conditions.
About one month later Mr. A noticed that there were three new growths in the area around the site of his surgery. He paid the dermatologist $250.00 to have these growths biopsied. They were cancerous. He was sent to a Mo’s surgery center at the Regional Hospital and told that he required surgery to remove these cancers and that the procedure involved testing the tissue around the removed tumors for cancer cells and that they would keep removing tissue until the area was clean. They could not quote a price for the surgery because it would depend on how much tissue had to be removed. He had good credit and a charge card. The surgery took four hours, alternating cutting and testing until the operating dermatologist was satisfied. There was a large open area about the size of a dollar bill where the cancers were removed. The total charge on Mr. A’s credit card was $3,640.00. The doctor who performed the surgery was not a surgeon, but a dermatologist.
Mr. A was concerned about the size and depth of the wound and a friend suggested that he see a plastic surgeon. Doctor Lee, a board-certified plastic surgeon, took one look and recommended a skin graft. Under general anesthesia, skin was removed from a donor site on the thigh and transplanted to cover the open wound in the calf. The doctor’s bill was $17, 404.00 and the follow-up care was $1,787.00. Mr. A stopped payment on the credit card for the doctor and the hospital bill of $18,560.00 for this one-hour outpatient operation. Mr. A had no insurance coverage to pay the hospital and the plastic surgeon. The hospital is threatening litigation. Mr. A’s credit is ruined. Dr. Lee has agreed to accept a lesser amount, and they are negotiating.
In conclusion, under the Trump administration all insurance will be privatized, and the old “pre-existing condition” exclusion rule will likely be reinstated at a cost to Mr. American of $41,164.00 in this instance. Under Obamacare or Medicare insurance would have paid approximately $11,579.00 which would have covered all of the medical and hospital bills with no copayment by Mr. A. The Obamacare law would have stopped insurance companies from immediately cancelling policies when the insured became ill and would have kept the insurance companies from denying coverage when the insured had an underlying condition. It was a big loss for Mr. and Mrs. American. By voting for Mr. Trump, they received a $1,400 tax rebate but had to pay over $41,000.00 in increased medical expenses which were formerly fully covered by insurance.
Those wonderful tax reductions which inspired Mr. and Mrs. American to vote for Trump caused an increase in the national debt of over $1,000,000,000,000.00 (One Trillion dollars!). Which means an estimated $3,076.00 more of debt for every man, woman and child in the United States! The upper one percent received over $60,000.00 each in their tax rebates and the large corporations did even better. Every time the national debt goes up the interest on it cripples our economy even more, leaving fewer tax dollars to support our basic needs.
Under the Biden administration Mrs. American’s monthly insulin bill, as a senior, went down from $500.00 per month to $35.00, She just found out that under the Trump regime her insulin medication will probably go back up to $500.00 monthly. Big Pharma is claiming that they must charge high prices for medicine because of the cost of research. They don’t disclose that a large amount of the cost of research is paid by the government. The Biden administration was able to fight the drug industry. The Trump administration is quite friendly with the drug industry which has 1,834 registered lobbyists working for them. The MAGA people don’t care if the price of insulin goes back up to $500.00 per month. Mrs. A will probably pay an additional $465.00 per month or $5,580 per year more for her insulin under the Trump presidency. Mr. and Mrs. American are considering filing for bankruptcy, but they still adore their leader, President Trump, who wants an open market to govern the price of drugs. That doesn’t work too well when one company has total patent control over the production and sales price of a necessary drug.
Some gene therapy drugs like Hemgenix, cost up to $3,500,000.00 per dose.! The drug Kimmtrak, for eye cancer costs $18,760 per vial or $975,520.00 per year and fifty percent of the patients develop metastasis (spreading of the cancer) anyhow. The CEOs of these companies which are claiming poverty, earn quite a bit. J&J pays its CEO $28.4 million a year. Eli Lilly which under the democrats, reduced the price of insulin, pays its CEO $26.6 Million annually. TEVA pays its chief executive $25.7 million each year. Where is this money coming from? You!
Besides destroying Medicare and Medicaid and Obamacare, the Maga Crowd is encouraging the corporate practice of medicine. Interestingly, the Bar Associations across the country are successfully fighting the corporate ownership of law firms. Not so in medicine. Corporations are allowed to buy doctors’ practices and dictate how the doctors, as employees, will practice medicine. The new patient doesn’t even get to see a doctor but sees a “Professional Assistant” who will decide what nurse will treat the patient. Doctors will largely be replaced to save money and increase profits. The nurses will be allowed to spend no more than ten minutes with any patient. Surgeries will be evaluated and only permitted based on profit, comparing the time it takes for a nurse to perform the procedure and the amount to be paid by the insurance company.
Small hospitals will be closed. Large hospitals will be merged. Storefront walk-in clinics run by nurses will replace emergency rooms, but without the equipment and trained doctors. It will take much longer to get to a hospital, resulting in more deaths. Rural areas that were the “base” of the Trump party will have no local medical emergency facilities.
With privatized uncontrolled medical insurance and with the absence or reduction of Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare, the average American will be unable to pay for an expensive medical operation. It will be like 1932. The family will have to chip in to pay for grandma’s blood pressure pills and her heart valve replacement. When she gets out of the hospital there will be no home care provided. These were the “good old days” that MAGA wants back. Not so good for you!
SOCIAL SECURITY
Let’s not forget Social Security. Mr. and Mrs. American were counting on Social Security to support them in their Golden Years. Expect the Trump people to reduce social security payments drastically and to make the qualifying age at least seventy. Also, there will be no death or survivors’ benefits. We all paid our own money into social security over our working lifetimes. This money should have been carefully managed and have returned a large amount of interest. The average life expectancy of men presently is a little over seventy-three years. All the people who have died before age seventy, probably around twenty five percent, will lose the social security money that they contributed and the earned interest on it. This large amount should be added to the social security fund. Treating this fund as a reverse mortgage, the survivors who are over seventy should be fully covered without any cost to the taxpayers. What happened to all our money?
Concerning Social Security, the government has a duty to be careful in handling our money which we earned and entrusted to it. Hopefully they didn’t squander it on foreign junkets. Where is the accounting for our money? What happened to the defaulted accounts of the dead? Mr. and Mrs. American should tell Mr. Trump that, if necessary, the rich corporations should be taxed, but the government should never limit or discontinue Social Security.
In conclusion, in the world’s most successful economy there should be no issue about affording the most advanced drugs and medical care to all citizens under a payment plan that they can easily afford. Medicare and Medicaid and Obamacare have become part of our society and are not “giveaways.” Far less successful countries have better medical plans.
GOD BLESS OUR WAR HEROES AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!